[Vita Review] SunFlowers

Say it with SunFlowers! Take control of the Sun, grow the most beautiful flowers and offer them to your soulmate or your friends.

SunFlowers for the Playstation Vita (and iOS) is an Indie game developed by The Game Atelier. This casual game, at a budget price ($3.99), is pretty fun and could very well entertain you between bigger gaming sessions!

SunFlowers PS Vita Gameplay

Gameplay
Like you can see from the previous video, SunFlowers‘ gameplay is pretty straightforward: you control the sun horizontally by moving your finger on the screen, then aim and shoot clouds with a sunbeam by tapping the screen. Hitting “happy” clouds will make them drop water below, which is necessary for flowers to grow. If you hit a “grumpy” cloud it’ll drop lightning and burn your flowers (friendly advice: you want to avoid that!). There are a few others hazards that must be avoided as the game progresses.

When a flower has had enough water drops, it will grow into a full flower and leave seeds around it. If it’s the first time you collect it, it’ll be added to your garden. Once in your garden, you can either contemplate your collection, or share your most valuable specimens to your friends via an in-game sharing system.

The game has a main campaign called “SunFlowers,” which can take a few hours to beat, considering there are 3 difficulties available and a full extension named “Tropical World,” which practically doubles the gameplay.

SunFlowers supports PSN Trophies, and while the first half is easy to obtain, a few ones will require more effort. I’m pretty sure, however, that all of them can be obtained in around 10 hours.

Speaking of gameplay time, some checkpoints must be reached in order to start again when you get a game over (or to put this in game terms, too many flowers got burned). In my opinion, the checkpoints are too far from each other; it usually takes 25 to 30 minutes in order to reach the next one.

If you get a game over between two checkpoints, you have to start over from the previous one, and he’s often pretty far back. For a casual game, I would have preferred to be able to play smaller gaming sessions of 5 to 10 minutes.

Graphics and Audio
The art direction of this game is very cute: everything is colorful and nicely animated! The soundtrack is appropriate for this genre and the main theme might get stuck in your head for a few hours after a play session. If you want to hear the soundtrack, it’s available on Bandcamp.

Final ThoughtsSunFlowers is a good casual game with fun gameplay! In my opinion, the checkpoints are too far from each other, but this might not be a big deal for everyone. A demo is available so you can try the game and see for yourself if you like it!

Review

Pros

Cons

Fun and cute gameplayTwo games in oneTrophy supportAvailable for $3.99

Checkpoints are too far from each other

Rating

75%

Cost: $3.99
You can purchase SunFlowers from the PSN.

Disclaimer
Total amount of time played before writing this review: 5 hours.

This review is based off of a retail copy of the game purchased by reviewer